


Do you believe that I can hear colors?

by neonstyxx



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Cuddling, Drabble, Fluff, M/M, Synesthesia, also where's ash, i just wanna write malum, malum, this has no point whatsoever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonstyxx/pseuds/neonstyxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael has synesthesia and he would love to keep seeing yellow all his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do you believe that I can hear colors?

**Author's Note:**

> a little something i whipped up quick because i have a lot of malum feels and i wanna write about synesthesia! i'm not an expert or anything but i believe i have synesthesia. thus, every depiction of synesthesia is from my personal experience. enjoy!

Two weeks ago Michael didn’t know that not everyone associate names with colors.

He didn’t know that immediately thinking _red_ when he heard somebody say “Brendon Urie” is not a very common thing. He thought everyone immediately think about a color when they heard a name. Heck, not just names. Numbers, words, songs, _smells,_ those are the few things that always pops a color in Michael’s head. Sometimes it’s super clear like how the number two is red and the word treaty is a sandy brown color. Other times (most times actually) it’s just a faint feeling of a color. Like when you know there is something yellow behind you but you can’t quite place whether it’s a vibrant yellow or a shy pastel yellow. For Michael, everything is always in color. Even when he was closing his eyes while listening to the new All Time Low album (the most calming combination of light blue and orange) or when he closed his eyes in content when he was cuddling Calum (warm fuzzy maroon), everything is always in color.

How can the majority of people in this world live in such unsaturated world, Michael will never understand. For him, everything is always in loud colors.

\--

The pale boy was just lounging around with his DS when suddenly someone burst into the room, the loud bang of the door being their drum roll. Michael winced at the sound before looking up from his DS to see his best friend standing in front of the sofa he was on. Calum’s eyebrows were furrowed and he had his lips pursed, and Michael knows that this means the younger boy is upset. Upset Calum is probably Michael’s least favorite Calum because it reminds him of bleak brown and muddy colors that doesn’t suit Calum at all. He shuts the little console and made a grabby hand for the bassist. If he accidentally lost all of his progress including his newly evolved Ninetales, he doesn’t find out until later on. Calum’s eyes lit up a bit upon seeing his silly gesture, and immediately Michael thought of the prettiest yellow hue he has ever seen. Giving up to the older’s embrace, Calum moved right into Michael’s arms, flopping his body on top of the wheezing boy.

“Fuck Cal, you’re heavy.” His voice was strained. He wiggled around to find a better, not life threatening position for them to cuddle. Suddenly the sofa became too small and Michael’s head is swimming in lilac.

“Excuse the added muscle mass.” Calum retorts, while shuffling to lay comfortably on the older’s chest “the morning workouts has finally paid off.

“If by morning workout you meant disrupting Michael’s happy morning, then yes, it paid off. Now you can stop disrupting Michael’s happy morning.” He huffed, wrapping one of his pale arms around Calum. He smiled at the contrast of their skins. Michael always loved seeing how visually different he is from Calum, it reminds him of how beautiful the Maori boy is.

“Your happy morning is sleeping until 10.” The bassist said while poking Michael’s stomach. “Shut up and cuddle me will ya? I came here to relieve some tension not add up to it.”

“Can’t help it dude, I’m too hot to not add sexual tension.”

“Can this be about me and _not_ your dick, please?” His words held no venom, as he planted a kiss on Michael’s inner arm. It’s the only place he can reach okay? Not weird at all. “I’m seriously stressed, Mike.”

Michael softened at this and tangle his hand in the messy black hair of his best friend. Calum gets stressed a lot these days. His theory is that Calum is stressed because of their long tour and quick paced life of a band. He knows Calum and he knows how much Calum loves music, especially playing bass to a crowd of people who loves what they do. But being a band turned out to be more than just writing songs and playing shows. There’s interviews and photo shoots and a lot of other publicity stuff they have to do. Not to mention everything is so _fast moving_ considering they gotta finish the Asia length of the tour in a very short time, and then UK, and then the states. It’s not even jet lag anymore it’s just the feeling of being dragged around in their own lives.

It’s a huge blur of unmixed colors.

He wanted to tell Calum all the white lies. All the “it’s gonna be okay” and “it will get better” but all of those lines will just drop into a deaf ear. The Maori boy had heard all of those thousands and thousands of times and he deserve something better than a mediocre advice.

But Michael has none. So he just keep threading his fingers in Calum’s black hair, trying to soothe the younger boy into relaxing. He can feel the strained muscles relax against his torso (which reminds him that he is still smushed between Calum and a sofa) as the bassist gave a content hum.

“Mikey?” suddenly Calum called out, startling Michael by a tiny bit.

“Yes it is I.” and he smiled as Calum’s soft giggle filled his head with pastel rose color.

“Tell me a story.”

Michael cleared his throat. “Once there was an asshole that likes to squish his best friend—OW FUCKING HELL CALUM.” His sentence was cut with an elbow to his rib.

“That’s was rude.” He deadpanned, as if elbowing the person you’re cuddling is widely accepted by the society.

“Okay, okay, I’ll try again. Don’t assault me.” Michael groaned. Who even has elbows that sharp? Only Calum probably. “So yeah, this is not a story but… I can hear colors.”

He was met with utter silence, which Michael took as a sign to continue.

“I thought it is normal, but I was playing video games with Luke one day and I just said how weird it is for Wendy’s to have a red logo when they sound so blue. Luke asked me what does blue sounds like and I kid you not it was both the stupidest question and the hardest one yet.” Calum let out a breathy laugh, probably from imagining Luke trying to understand the sound of _blue_. “So I said I don’t know, but I do know. You know? It’s really unexplainable and it’s so annoying because you know you’re not tripping acid but fucking Lucas was looking at me like I’m high.” Michael sighed, and Calum broke into a laughing fit on his chest. He was going to insist that this is not a laughing matter, but Calum looked so happy he just gotta let it slide.

“So,” The bassist piped out, still out of breath. “You can hear colors?”

“Sometimes I can smell it.” He remembered how Calum’s room had made him think about the color navy for the longest time. The weird mixture of detergent his mom used on the sheets and his perfume and sunlight creeping in to shine on the ratty guitar on the floor just screams navy to Michael.

“Cool.” Calum was lying on his stomach now, face to face with Michael. Michael still think that the weight of his friend is crushing is internal organs. But he won’t say a word. Calum was looking at him with the most mesmerized brown orbs he has ever seen and he can smell the musky smell of Calum that reminds him of the color lime green. “What color am I?”

“Yellow.” Michael said without missing a heartbeat. Yellow is the color he saw when Calum first introduced himself, back then in a small playground. Yellow is the color he saw when Calum smiled despite the black eye and scraped knee he got from fending off bullies. Yellow is the color he saw when he first watched Calum win his first football game. Yellow is their sleepovers, staying up late under the covers just because. Yellow is Calum. Calum is yellow. Michael doesn’t even have to think anymore when it comes to Calum.

“Yellow?” Calum repeated, snapping Michael out of his reverie.

“What? You don’t like it?”

“Well I was hoping it’d be something cool like red or black.” He said jokingly.

“Nah son,” the blond smiled and wrapped both arms around the younger boy’s built torso. He laughed as Calum whined and tried to break free, only to have the grip around him tightened and Michael’s chin on his head. The bassist’s protest came in muffled yells as he tried to wiggle out of the older boy’s pale arms that hugged him like an octopus. Michael laughed at this, and he believed that the muffled breathy sound from Calum was laughter too. “You’re yellow. My yellow. Fuckin’ deal with it.” And honestly? Michael is completely okay with the whole world being black and white as long as he can still see his yellow.

**Author's Note:**

> leave some comments or reach out to me on tumblr 1-800-malumtrash


End file.
